Moments after his Woodland High School girls soccer team made program history by winning a first-round playoff game last week, coach Andres Olmedo didn't mince words about the Wolves odds to win today's semifinal-round game.

"I know a few players from Placer and I think we have a better chance of advancing if we play Placer," he said before learning it would be Vista del Lago of Folsom his team would face in the Division IV Sac-Joaquin Section semifinal.

Vista del Lago (13-1-3), which hosts today's game at 6:30 p.m., presents a tougher challenge to Woodland (11-5-3) not just because it beat Placer 3-1 last Thursday nor because on paper it's the higher seed (the Eagles are No. 2 in the eight-team bracket, the Wolves No. 3).

No, the Eagles present a huge roadblock in the Wolves path to Saturday's final because their powerful team is led by perhaps the best player in the tournament.

Janae Gonzalez has only played a handful of games for Vista del Lago this season because she spent part of March representing Mexico in the FIFA Women's Under-17 World Cup. The junior played forward for Mexico and scored two goals and had two assists in four games. One of her goals was voted the goal of the tournament.

"She's a super player," Olmedo said of Gonzalez, who has both U.S. and Mexican citizenship.

"They have a good program over there. They have a good feeding program."

Woodland will counter with talent of its own led by the threesome of forwards Kristen Ward and Ellie Burgess and midfielder Emily King.

Ward led the Wolves in scoring in the regular season with 20 goals but played with a fever in the team's 3-2 first-round win over Livingston last week. Still, she had an assist on one of Burgess' two goals. King had the other on a penalty kick.

Woodland trailed Livingston 1-0 at halftime after giving up a goal 50 seconds into the match. But King's PK early in the second half was the first of three straight goals for the Wolves, who won in the postseason for the first time in school history.

After the game Olmedo said, "the girls kind of showed that they wanted it after the first goal. It showed through the rest of the game. The key moment of the game was the early penalty kick. That's what I told the girls at the half; if we score one everything is going to open up for you guys, and it did."